After Forever Ends (32 page)

I could hear him crying. Oliver crying.

Oh no! Oliver!

I tried to reach for him, but I couldn’t move. My arms were like lead weights, immobile. I’d never seen my Oliver cry. I’d never seen him sad. I didn’t want him to cry because of me. I was there, I was fine. I had to let him know. I tried to open my eyes, but I couldn’t.

Oh, Oliver, don’t cry…I’m all right…please…

But he did. I heard him sob and I couldn’t do a thing to comfort him.

“Come on now! Oliver, stop! She’s going to wake up! They sedated her is all! When we got here she was confused! She was talking nonsense and fighting the nurses! Oliver! Come here,” Alexander’s voice was gentle. I could hear a rustle of clothing beside me as if Alex had taken his brother into an embrace, “She’s going to be fine, Big brother. She’ll be fine.”

The room went quiet again. I fell into blackness. I was floating.

I felt a pinch in the back of my hand. I was suddenly aware that there were tubes plugged into an IV, all attached to a vein in me. I could once again hear pieces of conversations.

“…I feel so guilty…”

“…not your fault, Son…” Edmond’s voice, “Thank God…someone up there was looking …your brother was listening…”

“So odd, really…” Alex sounded like he was speaking from a within a dream, “...just knew I had to get there and fast…kept thinking Sil’s all alone and she needs something…seemed so urgent…”

I fell into blackness. I was floating.

I could hear movement, a chair being rolled across a floor. My shirt was pushed up, my belly felt wet and cold. Something slick and round was pressing against it. A man was speaking, “I’m sorry. There’s no heartbeat.”

“Are you certain?” Oliver asked. He was holding my hand.

“Yes. I’m absolutely certain.”

“The baby’s dead then?”

“I am so sorry.” The object left my belly.

“How far along were we?” Oliver’s voice was hardly a whisper.

“I would say about fifteen or sixteen weeks.”

“Oh, Christ!” It was Alexander, “Why?”

“Please,” Oliver whispered, “Explain why this happened.”

“I don‘t know,” The man speaking was wiping my belly with a towel. He pulled my shirt back down and it stuck to the goo that was left, “The placenta has separated from the uterine wall. It happens, but almost never this early in pregnancy,” He sounded far too casual, almost as if he were reading off a card. “There are many factors that can lead to miscarriage in the first and early second trimesters. We’ll have to run some tests to find out for certain, but chances are that no one could have done anything to prevent this. Spontaneous abortions occur in about twenty percent of pregnancies. They might even be more common earlier on and women just associate the bleeding with their normal cycles. In your wife’s case, this was a medical event,” I managed to open my eyes just a crack. I could see a doctor standing to my right, speaking to the twins. A nurse was preparing a large syringe. “We’ve got the bleeding under control, but her body hasn’t expelled the fetus.”

“I want my wife to be well. What do I have to do to make her well?”

“We need to induce dilation and expel the fetus.”

Oliver swayed on his feet. Alexander steadied him. “What does he need to do? “ Alex asked, holding his brother tight against his side.

“He needs to sign the consent forms.”

“Fine,” Oliver’s voice was just over a whisper, “Get them. Let’s do it now.”

“I’ll have the nurse get them.”

Oliver looked sincerely ill, “Will she give birth then? “

“She’ll have to, yes. “

“Will she be awake?”

“She’s only lightly sedated.”

“Put her out,” Oliver said flatly, “Put her out cold. I don’t want her to feel any pain. I don’t want her to know what’s happening to her.”

“That can be done.”

“I want to be with her.”

“You can do that. You do understand that it will be a still birth? “

“I understand.”

The nurse injected something into my IV line. I fell back into blackness. I was floating.

A growl, a gurgle…it was a machine. There were bright lights and voices. Something hot was pressing on the inside of my thigh. I could feel pain, pain in my abdomen. Horrible pressure in my bottom. I gagged, trying not to vomit. I wanted to cry, but I couldn’t. I could feel fingers. Someone was touching me down there. That sound I heard was suction. They’d put some sort of vacuum inside of me and they were drawing out my baby.

“No, no!” I thought desperately, gagging, “Wake up, Silvia! Wake up! It’s a nightmare, it’s a bad dream! Wake up! “I tried to move my fingers, tried to shake my head, “It hurts! Oh, ouch! Ouch! Help me! Oliver! Oliver! Oliver, help me!”

He was holding my hand. The IV in my arm jerked as he leaped to his feet. “Something’s wrong! She’s moving! She’s awake! Help her!”

I opened my eyes. I clasped and unclasped my hands, but I couldn’t move my arms. I looked at Oliver, desperately at Oliver, but all I could see was a shadow of him, a blurred outline of his figure. I tasted vomit in my throat, gagged harder, more painfully, and realised I was choking. I still couldn’t move my arms. I felt my body convulse, lift up off the mattress and slam back down. Oliver shouted again, but I couldn’t hear what he said through the blood rushing through my ears. I was helpless. All I could do was gag and jerk and lie in that awful bed.

Someone turned my head to the side and held it down. “Clear the airway!”

“Damn it!” Oliver shouted, “I said help her!”

A tube slipped into my mouth. More gurgling. I made a grab for it, wanting to shove it away from me. Someone else held my shoulders. I closed my eyes and tried to scream, but I only choked more. A nurse streaked around the bed and took the IV line into her hand. She held down a plunger and I felt my body go slack. I tumbled back into blackness. Then I was floating.

A voice said, “She’ll rest a while longer. There doesn’t appear to be any lasting damage.”

“Will she be able to have more children?” It was Ana who asked.

“She’ll be able to conceive just as she did before the miscarriage. This sort of thing doesn‘t typically repeat itself.”

“She’ll be fine then?” Oliver’s voice was trembling.

“We’re going to keep her overnight. She should be out from under the sedative in a couple of hours. She should be on her feet by the morning. We’ll see how she feels.”

“Thank God! Thank sweet, sweet God!” Edmond said it.

There was relief in Alex’s voice. “You can breathe easy now, Ol.”

“We all can,” Oliver smoothed my hair with his hand and kissed my forehead, “Thank you so much, Sir. I couldn’t lose my Sil. She’s the whole world to me.”

They were all there with me, the Dickinson’s. My family. I felt a tear catch in the corner of my eye and hang there, but I was unable to cry. I wanted to thank them all for coming, to thank them all for loving me as one of their own, but I still couldn’t even open my eyes. I wanted to let them know how much they meant to me. No one had ever loved me but them, no one but them and my Oliver.

Oliver kissed me again. I wanted to tell him about the conversations I had heard. I wanted to lie in his arms and cry until I couldn’t cry anymore. There were so many things that I wanted to tell him and I just couldn’t. I wanted to tell him that he had been right, the Lord and the Lady were kind. I wanted to tell him that they saved me, that it was the Lord who went and got Alex. I wanted to tell him what their names were. I wanted to tell him about the tree I was talking to and about Aflie being there and about the cobalt blue sky. I wanted to tell him what I had learned that day about life and how close Death had been and how he had not been there for me, but I tried to fight him anyway. I wanted to tell him that I would have fought Death for our baby. I would have torn him apart before I allowed him to take her, but Lady Folia had put me to sleep because she knew I’d fail, because she knew I had no chance against him.

It was all real. Life, elves, muffins and death…it was all real. And I understood none of it. Not a thing of any of it, but it was still real and it was beautiful and it was savage and I hated what had happened, but I loved my life. I loved my life because of him, because he was in it. I wanted to tell him that I remembered what Headmistress Pennyweather had said and that I still knew what it was I first saw that made me love him. I wanted to tell him that we were going to be all right and that we were going to get through it together, just like always. He didn’t need to worry about me. I wasn’t going anywhere, not today and not tomorrow. I’d never leave him.

It was a long time later, but I finally opened my eyes. Oliver was sitting beside me with his head down and his hand hanging over the rail of my bed. I reached out for him and put my fingers against his.

“Sil?” He practically jumped, “Oh, Love, it’s so good to see those beautiful blue eyes!”

I tried to speak, but I don’t know what I said. I finally just put my hand on the back of his head and I pulled him down. I kissed him for a long time, one kiss without breaking contact with his lips, “I’m not hurt,” I finally tried to say, but my voice was a hoarse whisper, “Or ticked off…I’m Just Silvia and I’m just fine and I love you…”

“Silvia,” His voice was shaky. His beautiful brown eyes were swollen and bloodshot behind tears, “I’ve been waiting for you to wake up! I’m so sorry, Love! I’m so sorry that I wasn’t there for you when you needed me…”

“It wasn’t you. It was me. I did something wrong! I put a wrong something in the batter and I spoiled the muffin and it died…” I shook my head tried to pull myself together so I could say what I meant instead of blathering like a fool. “I didn’t know or I wouldn’t have done it!”

“Silvia, they gave you loads of drugs. You’re not making any sense, Love. You didn’t do anything wrong.”

“No, no! Listen to me!” I clung to his hand.

“I’m listening, Sweetheart.”

“I never told you. I never told you how much I wanted a child, but I did. I told the wood and the winds and I told the Lord and Lady. I told them everything, but I didn’t tell you that I wanted to have your baby so badly. I wanted something that was you and me all in one…magic…I wanted to make muffin magic…” I was struggling to speak. I could hear my words slurring. My eyes kept closing. I fought to make any sense at all, “You don’t know how much I love you or how much I need you. I love you, Oliver, and I love our baby, but I didn’t even know she was there and--”

“Shush, Love, shush…I know.”

“Please don’t hate me, because I don’t know what I did wrong! I tried! I tried, but I couldn’t stop Death from taking the baby! Her life had already spilled out with my blood onto the grass!”

“Sweetheart, stop it! Hate you? No, Silvia, no,” He took my hand in both of his and pressed it to his lips, “I’ve been so worried about you! When Alexander found you he said you were asleep. He thought you were having a kip, he said you looked so peaceful in the rain that he almost laughed. And then he went to wake you and he saw all the blood…you gave him a fright, Love. You gave us all such a fright.”

“But we had a baby!”

“I know about the baby. And I’m sorry, but, yes, she’s gone. I got to see her. I got to hold her. She was so beautiful. Tiny. I could hold her in one hand…” He held his hand palm up and stared at it.

“Do you want one? Did you want that one?” My head was lolling from side to side. “I’m so sorry about her…”

“Silvia, don’t be sorry! You’ve done nothing wrong! I want a baby someday. Sure. With you? A little muffin? Oh, yeah. And if I’d had a choice none of this would have happened and we’d be out picking a cradle for the one that’s gone now,” He looked so earnest it was breaking my heart. A tear was clinging to the tip of his nose, “But more than that I want you. Alive and well. Don’t you understand that I can’t live without you? Don’t you know that I couldn’t get through a day knowing that I was going to come home and you wouldn’t be there?” He sniffed and the tear fell, “I can’t even tell you how much I love you because there are no words…and this… this was just a bad something that happened, Love. It’s the worst something that has ever happened to us, but it’s not the worst thing that could have. Alexander might not have had the thought to drop in on you and you could have lay in that garden and bled to death in the rain. I could’ve lost you!”

“Another bad something happened, Sweetheart.”

“What was that?”

“I killed the good chicken with my car on my way to school.”

He laughed. A tear rolled down the back of my hand as he kissed my knuckles, “I don’t care about any chickens! I care about my wife! We can get more chickens if we like!”

“I lost our baby!” I cried out and, dizzy, fell back on to the bed. Oliver helped steady me, “She died! I saw the blood! Loads and loads of blood! Lady Folia said it was too late! Death has no eyes and no ears, but I yelled at him, I did! I told him to piss off, I did! But there was nothing I could do! Not a thing and I could hear a baby howling and I wasn’t for sure it was ours, it could have been the boon, but Lady Folia didn’t want me to have the experience of losing mine, so she asked the winds to make me sleep…”

“Lady Folia?”

“It’s her name. The Lady of the Wood.” I told him, trying to lift my head, “And the Lord, his name is Lord Copse.”

“Oh, OK,” He said this like he already knew.

“Oliver…they’re real. And you were right, they’re very kind. It’s all real, Sweetie. Life, muffins, The Lord and Lady, the Wood, the winds and Death…I heard them all! I saw Death coming and he made everything a beautiful, terrible blue and I didn’t understand a thing! They were all bigger than me, all the bigger and the stronger of me and I couldn’t even move!”

“OK, Sil. OK. Please settle down! It’s done, Love. It’s done and you’re safe now. ”

“I want a dog!” I wailed suddenly, veering completely off the subject. Oliver grinned. “If I can’t have my muffin, I want a dog! Can we get one?”

“Yes, Love. Oh, yes. Two if you like.”

“No, just the one. I want a Scottish Terrier.”

“OK.”

“And if it’s a girl I want to call her Ivy and if it’s a boy I want to call him Duncan.”